Summary

Ever since its release, Collected Company has been a force in Modern. Decks such as Abzan Company have used the powerful instant to full effect. In recent months, Company deck have fallen slightly out of favor, showing us that perhaps a new approach with Collected Company is needed. This Bant Company deck, piloted by southpaw2353 on MtGO on January 11, aims to be that new approach. By replacing black with blue, many of the cards don’t change, but the overall strategy does. Abzan Company acted as a value deck that threatened an instant-speed combo finish. Bant Company, however, forgoes the combo pieces that black affords it, and instead opts for more tempo-oriented creatures and powerful sideboard cards found in blue. The strategy of this deck is a tempo deck with great resilience from the value-focused cards such as Eternal Witness and Knight of the Reliquary.

The sideboard of this deck does a very good job of covering its blind spots. Abzan Company is very excellent against Infect, in large part due to the mainboard copies of Melira, Sylvok Outcast. Bant Company doesn’t have access to Melira, hence the inclusion of Blessed Alliance and Izzet Staticaster in the sideboard. Kataki, War’s Wage and Stony Silence deal with the Affinity matchup, although frequently 3 cards in the 60 card deck won’t be enough to reliably suppress the small robots. The 4 copies of Unified Will are an excellent inclusion in this deck. They help massively in matchups where the tempo game thrives and needs to be maximized, such as Ad Nauseam or Tron.

This deck thrives against decks that are trying to assemble powerful combos or try to out-value the opponent. However, against decks like Burn or Affinity, which are linear decks that gain value from casting more spells faster than the opponent, Bant Company can struggle. If you take this deck to a tournament, make sure you get tons of practice in beforehand, as the value of the knowledge of how to pilot a deck as complicated as this cannot be overstated. Once mastered, expect to have game against most of the format and take people by surprise. This deck could very well become a force to be reckoned with after the bannings of Gitaxian Probe and Golgari Grave-Troll.